What do you want the machine to do besides storage?Simple storage doesn't need a lot CPU power, which can make quiet cooling easier.Where do you want to put it?If you have room away from your workstation you can relax on silence.What you want to build is the power and size of a workstation.I suggest you read these two articles:HP Proliant Microserver, I use this one for storage.Silent Home Server Build Guide holds 6 drives in a fairly small space.

If it is only for storage then I agree that you are going over the top on system components. A NAS might be more appropriate if you need it networked. How many systems are you going to be connecting to it from and for what purpose?

Do you have some specific harddrives already that you have to use? Otherwise I'd figure that up to six of Seagates 4TB(ST4000DM000 ) drives in a Fractal Design Node 304 chassis should go a long way, and be quiet thanks to the exceptional audio characteristics of this drive model. You'll just need to pick a mini-ITX motherboard.

I've read these articles. In fact I bought the lían li case Two years ago. BUt is loud as hell in its actual locatión. I'm moving the server to a bedroom, it must be quiet.

I think 6 hard-drives will be hard to get bedroom quiet.

I use a WD20EARS, which has been tested as very quiet, however at night I can easily make out the spindle and seek noises of the suspended drive. So you might have to resort to extra silencing enclosures on top of suspension.

I use a WD20EARS, which has been tested as very quiet, however at night I can easily make out the spindle and seek noises of the suspended drive. So you might have to resort to extra silencing enclosures on top of suspension.

No one is going to sleep there, it'll be an office. My wife has an iMac with a SSD drive, is very quiet. She has to study and i want the server to be as quiet as her iMac. I know it's near impossible with retail cases, but I want to make it as close as possible.

Now if you are not comfortable with suspending hdds, i would go with Fractal Design Define R4, it has very good cable management, their hdd on grommets its decent, it uses 140mm fans, and the included fans should work fine under 7v for quiet setup. I would probably add a third fan to have a positive pressure and have some air exit through the passive/hybrid PSU, to help it cool itself. It should give you 8 hdds on the standard mounts, you can probably mount more on the 2x 5.25 hdds. The case is very restrictive with the door + inside door + mesh and the rest of the case is closed aside from the 140mm exit, its kinda cheap, on sale you can find it at $80, i think it should make a good option for a small server if you are not into suspending.

Mamaun wrote:

Intel Celeron G470

Why the G470? seems 2.0ghz celeron for $44, i would just go with Intel Celeron G1610 2.60GHz LGA 1155 Processor BX80637G1610 $43, faster and cheaper. Almost all ivy bridge downclock the same frequencies at idle, so it should have very similar idle temps and power consumption, while still having more ghz in case you do need them.

Mamaun wrote:

Noctua NH-U12P SE2

Personally i think noctua coolers are great, probably among the best, just overpriced imo. For very quiet setup, i would recommend, if you can find one still, Scythe Mugen 3, the Slipstream that comes with the heatsink is a wonderful PWM fan, it can be dropped below 300rpm, where its inaudible, and still can be ramped up to 1600rpm if you were to need additional cooling, Asus FanXpert should help you manage it very easily, specially since its on the 4pin CPU fan heather where it has 20% limit, and with fanXpert you should be able to drop below 300rpm and create your own ramp up depending on the temp on your cpu. If you cant find it anywhere, then Thermalright HR-02 Macho, reviewed by SPCR Thermalright HR-02 Macho Quiet/Fanless Cooler, probably an overkill for celeron, but you might be able to run it passive.

Mamaun wrote:

Asus P8B75-M LX PLUS4GB 1333 DDR3

This seems fine, test fanXpert should be pretty good for a quiet setup. Check the mobo for compatibility on the memory so you avoid problems.

I found the MUGEN heatsink and I'll give a try at that celeron, although here in europe G470 is cheaper. I was more worried about power consumption than horsepower, but one core plus at same powerconsumprion is welcomed.

I like Fractal Cases. Since I'll only have 4 fans (2xcase + cpu + psu), will it be capable to silence my 6 noisy HDD's?

And about the PSU, I'm on a budget, so I don't want to spend more than 100€ in it. What about a Seasonic S12II Bronze? Now I have an early version of this PSU and ABSOLUTE LOVE IT (175€ in 2006, ouch!).

I found the MUGEN heatsink and I'll give a try at that celeron, although here in europe G470 is cheaper. I was more worried about power consumption than horsepower, but one core plus at same powerconsumprion is welcomed.

Nice that you have access to the mugen, us in the North america cant get Scythe products until they rework their distribution. Just to mention the only thing that i did find bad on the Mugen is their mounting mechanism, not that its bad, but hard to do as its bolted throught the bottom, a little hard to do it alone, not a big deal either, but much easier to do noctuas/thermarlight/prolimatech mounting brackets. On the CPU, honestly i never have used or even seen the G470, seems in the US its like OEM cpu, mostly for manufacturers of pcs, seems the price in the US is very close to what the 1610 is, but idk in europe. On sandy bridge most of the dual cores will have very similar consumption on idle as alll downclock the same, the difference was on loads as some had higher defualt clocks, same happens with ivy bridge, now speaking directly on G470, idk its a single core 2.0 ghz celeron.... could be it consumes less having one less core than the 1610, but my experience with i3 2100T was it idle really low, very much the same as the celerons and pentiums, but all were dual cores, i manage to idle around 14W headless. Here is up to you, if you can get the G470 cheap and you don't need the cpu pwoer that 1610 has, then go for it. The mugen should cool either at the lowest setting fine, on my HTPCMI (check sig) i have a mugen3 cooling an i3 2120 at 300rpm and even under Prime95 doesnt reach dangerous temps, load that will never happen on real world usage, so overall i expect that you will be able to run it at its minium settings and be fine with virtually silent CPU cooler, again the only thing that its harder to mount, once you do it its fine, very secure. One other thing about the fan, it can be droped very low, but will also depend on the motherboard and how it handles PWM fans, Asus should be fine, as they have 20% minimun on the CPU 4pin heathers, and fanxpert should be able to overwrite it and get it as low as it can, but im just saying this in case you go with another motherboard that can impact how the fan can be manage.

Mamaun wrote:

I like Fractal Cases. Since I'll only have 4 fans (2xcase + cpu + psu), will it be capable to silence my 6 noisy HDD's?

The best is to suspend them or to enclose them, the mounting on the R4 is on rubber grommets that will help some, but wont be as effective as the others mentions. Get quiet drives is another key thing, SPCR liked a lot the WD Reds 3tb, im about to mount 8x seagate 4tb on my server that i have read comments from fellow forum users that are decent drives, but no direct review form spcr.

Mamaun wrote:

And about the PSU, I'm on a budget, so I don't want to spend more than 100€ in it. What about a Seasonic S12II Bronze? Now I have an early version of this PSU and ABSOLUTE LOVE IT (175€ in 2006, ouch!).

The hdds will probably be the loudest components on the build, i believe the CPU cooler will be virtually inaudible below 500rpm, and the case fans can be brought down with the included fan controllers to 7v where they will be really quiet, you can still drop them 5v if you still can hear the case fans. The only remaining noise source will be the fan on the PSU. I have no experience with Seasonic S12II series, the only thing i can point you is a thread Hows the Seasonic S12II 520 Bronze ??.

Personally i always spend lot on PSUs, specially looking for something quiet, PSU is an item that you don't replace that often, i usually just upgrade motherboard/cpu/gpu, etc, but PSU unless its starting to fail or get noisy, i leave it, so i like to invest as much as my budget allows on them.

You will not have a snappy server, expect some boot times and stuff. If you and the other guys make money with this server, then testing time will matter?

That's no home server anymore. And if you really want to virtualise, i would not recommend anything without VT and other technical goodies, do not know if the G1610 supports any of them.

Looks to me you want professional quality and power. I can understand that a startup does not want to spend more than necessary, but skimping on "The Server" is like a craftsman buying WalMart home quality tools to build a skyscraper.

Get some pre-build i5 desktop and add in a 4 bay NAS with iSCSI. Virtualise the server on the i5 and use iSCSI for storage needs. And consider buying something with a decent warranty or even on site support within next business day.

I'm wondering if a X-400 or a Seasonic P460W will be ok to have the "server" quiet and stable.

Yes of course. Even with a Xeon E3-1235 + 12 hard drives + some other minor stuff the max load i was able to pull from that setup was around 200-230W. That is 50% of the maximum load of those passive power supplies, and it will run fine with that load for long periods of time (my X460 in that server runs probably over a year now).

Celeron, Pentium, i3, i5, i7 - in case of Socket 1155 it absolutely doesn't matter, they all will idle at around 20-25W from the socket. The only difference is when the maximum load happens, then of course a single core Celeron will use less power than a quadcore Xeon E3 with Hyperthreading, but performance will be different too.

But a mugen 3 (or4) will have a slipstream that can be undervolted via pwm (as long as your motherboards allows) to around 300rpm (slower than the fractal at 5V) where it will be inaudible, and cost less, but you have to make sure the mobo you chose can undervolt that low via 4pin pwm cpu header. On my htpcimi build I run a mugen 3 with scythe pwm kamaflex2 and via bios I can drop them between 250 and 300rpm, check my sig for the link.

I'l run it on an Asus P8B75-M LX PLUS. I hope to drop it between 300-400rpm

The fan can go there, its a matter if the motherboard will allow it to go that low. Make sure you connect it to CPU_FAN header on the motherboard, as the chassis_fan headers have a restriction of 60%, whiel the CPU_FAN has a restriction of 20% (at least thats the case on my ASUS GENE IV), get the latest of FAN Xpert, i believe for your mobo is V1.01.11, and play with it, till you get the way you want. On my intel Q67 and H61 builds, in both im able to drop them to 300rpm on pure bios, they just dont ramp up or at least to the levels where the bios will ramp it up, on the Asus you should be able to define your graph, play with the software. If you want see more, check Cool Tech: ASUS Fan Xpert 2 Demo - Take Control of Your CPU Fans

Be sure to post your experience with it and how it worked out for you.

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